


bittersweet [the fruits and moonlight children remix]

by Sour_Idealist



Category: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairing, F/F, F/M, Pregnancy, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ophelia finds her way to the beds of royalty, carrying sorrow and memories with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bittersweet [the fruits and moonlight children remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/gifts).
  * Inspired by [our moonlight revels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/184949) by [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust). 



> The Hamlet/Ophelia elements are only references to the play's canon. I hope that you don't mind them, and that you feel I in some way did the truly lovely original justice.

The fey remember things wrong, sometimes. Sideways and out of place, the future coming to them as a mortal might remember sleepy mornings. It’s as normal as an instrument going out of tune, as ponds that don’t hold in time quite right or fruits that grow malformed and sour. The little imperfections where earth and magic meet.

They pull a maid from a dangerous pool and she sings as sweet as a springtime kiss. When Pease-blossom and Moth lick the tears from her cheeks and pronounce them bitter, frowning, Titania holds out her hand and gestures: bring her here. She runs a finger delicately just under the girl’s eye, remembering to be careful – mortals need to see – and lifts the beads of water to her lips.

“Like oceans,” she muses, and can’t quite bring herself to spit it out. “Do you have oceans inside of you, little maid?”

“Greater things and lesser,” Ophelia murmurs, and tilts her face back, cheeks bare to Titania’s lips. The queen gives in.

Later, she feeds her new pet apples, red-edged pieces of crisp white flesh sliced off with a sharp thought. Ophelia nips her fingers sometimes as she accepts the bites (one hand fiddling with her skirt, the other wrapped in Titania’s hair) and accepts the reprimands tapped on her nose with good will.

“Fetch me pomegranates,” Titania orders, “and sweet red berries,” and turns back to the weary-looking girl. “Your lips should be red,” she explains, tracing the pale blue curves. The same color pulses under her wrists; Titania did not know that humans came in so many shades before. “Red, like apple skin.”

Ophelia nods solemnly, and when the pomegranates come, she lifts the first few seeds to her lips herself.

Her stomach swells, in time – none of them can say how much. “Was this Oberon?” Titania asks, fingers soft against the skin, “or the Puck?” To her surprise, Ophelia shakes her head.

“A passenger,” she says, covering the Queen’s hand with her own. “From where they called me mad.”

“And are you mad, little maid?”

“Once I crept about in shame for bedding royalty,” she says. “Now I am the bedchamber whore to a fairy queen.” She makes playful, without rancor, and draws Titania’s slender fingers down. It occurs to the queen that this girl is somewhere in between the Fair Folk here-and-now and the human, that she is as far off from Titania as she is from whichever prince’s child kicks inside her.

“And everyone I’ve bedded left their seeds to grow,” Ophelia whispers, those twilit-blue lips brushing against her ear. “Your apple seeds and pomegranates bringing things to life.”

Titania kisses her lips and then her stomach, chuckling into the skin, and wonders where they are in time, before or after midsummer. She knows that the child will be born with a bitter voice and eyes the brown of apple seeds, that Ophelia will love the ocean and she will dance before the water. She does not know if her delight in the soft silk of Ophelia’s hair and the smooth curve of her skull, the delicate ears in which to whisper, comes from memory or premonition. She knows that time and sorrow will take away her human someday, because these are things that fairies do not understand. And she hopes that midsummers of madness are as long-ago as they seem to her to be, because she would very much prefer that Ophelia’s fruit-and-royal child outweigh her sense of pride.


End file.
